RII, V.v. 31
by K.A. Keckler
I want to be the Canadian goose you
rescued from the highway median,
took home and watched TV with—
until I spat blood. Outside, black
wings wrapped around your back,
I took my last breath, neck draped
over your shoulder like an f clef
the tangerine sun peeled off in
sections, wind grazing
human skin and slick feathers,
you cried for me.
I want to be the emerald morning
field under your sneakers,
dew dappling rubber and ankles,
the new day you notice
like the first bits of consciousness
after waking from a dream
of stardust and baseballs.
The stitched orb as it leaps from
your hand
in the physics of bones and tendons,
streaking
through a portal of morning fog,
caught in the cracked leather of
another,
and returned to you.
Together in the movie set of the
afterlife, we’d escape to some backroom
speakeasy, slide
through walls into a canopied
bed, or lounge beside
a turquoise pool at a roadside motel
popping off ideas like bottle caps,
long, delicious swigs.
If I could be the line tumbling
from neuron spark to thought
to long fingers, I would burrow
that phrase,
feeling the contours
of alphabetic purity, folding myself
small into any e
or whimsical prop you offer a
character—
notepad, rock, can of hairspray.
I want to be the to-do list you mark
a mundane chore with the swiftest
ink eyelash,
dopamine hit of fleeting
accomplishment.
The subway hook you grab standing
with your bag of papers,
thinking about your class and the
sullen unrealized future gaze
from the hoodie-clad teenager
who clips your shoulder.
The earbud fitted inside your
concha’s
kidney bean darkness, I circuit your
cartilage
as you confess worries through lovely
lips and the tongue
I once held in my mouth like a
Samhain prayer.
I want to be the copper traces on
substrates, small
packages of data bonding with wires
as you stroll under
scaffolds and kaleidoscoping leaves,
mise en scène.
And the other goose, the one that
lived, following you
for a single city block, then flying
south with my flock
the scent of your soap on
mottled down,
too dear for my possessing.
A summer window flower in your
lilac evening breeze,
the note the messenger hands you in
the final act
proclaiming tragedy has twisted to
fortune, and with reverence
for the seed bulb of tomorrow,
play I in one person
many people
if I must—
and all will be contented.
BIO: K.A. Keckler teaches writing and dreams in recipes. Her work has appeared in L’Esprit Literary Review, The Iowa Review, StorySouth, Free State Review, and other journals. She loves Charles Simic, egrets, whodunnit podcasts, and sea glass